Well, as was forecast, we haven’t been around much lately.  But we have been giving.  We’ve had fun recently just letting a few weeks’ worth of $52s pile up and then handing the cash out all at once.  We’ve made two gifts since we last wrote: one to a close friend of ours, who along with his wife are missionaries and who expressed a dire need for support to get them through the end of winter (we weren’t alone in helping them out–they now have more than they need!); and another to a cause in support of my mother, who is raising funds for the American Heart Associaton’s Heart Walk.

These gifts were pretty much the opposite of anonymous–we obviously know, love, and communicated with the recipients–but I still say they honor the tradition we’ve started.

All that said, we’re about $75 shy of where we should be right now, according to the math of the $52 per week formula.  While we’re not following our old ways to the letter, we do want to make sure the amount stays at the same level, or higher.

I’d love to give $100 today to a charitable effort in need–any ideas?

As you’ve surely noticed if you’re anything of a regular reader (or one of our fellow givers), we’ve been incredibly delinquent in coming up with our regular weekly posts for the past month or so.  It is with some (but not much) regret that I’m here to tell you: Giver Boy and I have decided not to continue this blog in the same format in 2012.  I say not much regret because I can assure you that we are going to continue giving–at the same rate, or possibly even higher, as our funds allow.

Why have we decided this?  There are a number of reasons, but the three most salient are:

1) My (Giver Girl’s) work schedule has taken a busy turn.  (A very good thing!  More money = more giving!)

2) We have found ourselves in a position to financially help friends and family members in need in a way that was not asked of us last year, and these gifts have been more personal in nature, and less “let’s go write a blog post about that.”

3) Because of our improved financial outlook, we are starting to consider ways to make larger, less frequent gifts to a smaller number of charities.

What does all this mean for the blog?  Well, we’re not going anywhere, that’s for certain.  We want to keep our readers informed of our continued giving journey in 2012 and beyond, and we want to continue to write about that journey both for public and private edification.  We will keep all of our posts from 2011 live to the site and we encourage any existing or new weekly givers to check them out, either for giving ideas or for sentimental browsing.

And, as I say, we want to stay here and we want to stay connected with all of you.  You have made the past year such a powerful and unforgettable experience, just by sharing in it with us.

We can’t thank you enough for that.

Egad, are we ever delinquent.  We sincerely apologize for the weeks of silence, but rest assured we have not given up on our little project here.  Busy-ness has indeed gotten the better of us, but stay tuned for a major “catch-up gift” coming this Friday.

So, this one was sort of indirectly guided by the children.  We might have to consider moving our “gift day” to the weekend, because it’s nearly impossible to get a thoughtful word in edgewise with the kids on Friday.  They’re in school all day, of course, and then Friday is the one day per week that they’re guaranteed video game time.  (They’re never allowed on a school night and only sometimes on Saturdays.)  They tend to drop their bags and coats at the door and get a Wii remote in hand within seconds.

Anyway, inspiration hit Sunday night.  We spent a lazy day at home after plenty of playing in the snow on Saturday; after church, we lazed around, ate popcorn and rented Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  We napped and folded laundry.  By dinner time, I was in no mood to cook.  Giver Boy and I got everyone’s coats on and we headed out for burgers at Wendy’s.

It’s interesting how a change of scenery gets our family talking in ways we normally wouldn’t at home.  We got extra silly over our meal, goofing on who most looked like who in our family.  We’re a multiracial bunch and we love to spend time commenting on how each of us is a slightly different shade of tan or brown.  I was in the middle of insisting that our youngest, my only daughter, looks so much like me, when our middle guy disagreed.  He was, however, looking over and not through his glasses.  I suggested that he push them up on his nose for a better look.

I remember well when we first found out he needed glasses.  He was about four years old at the time, and over the summer we noticed a strange thing was starting to happen.  Every so often, his right eye would turn in towards his nose, independent of his left.  We thought we were imagining things at first, but as the summer wore on it was increasingly obvious.  I was so worried!  We took him to a pediatric ophthalmologist that fall, and the doctor confirmed that he has a condition called “accommodative esotropia.”  He will likely need glasses for the rest of his life.

What a change to my little guy’s face and health!  I cried a bit on the way home from the doctor’s that day; not a downpour, just a drizzle of tears as I got used to the idea and got over the guilt that he’d likely had difficulty seeing for quite some time without us knowing.  I have since grown to love the way he looks in glasses (we got him the coolest navy plastic frames and he literally gets compliments [and greasy fingerprints] on them daily), and to be honest, I even love the way his eye turns in when he smiles and looks up at me as those frames slip down his nose.

Anyway, back to Wendy’s.  Maybe my oldest suggested he was “blind.”  I think that’s how it got started.  But before long, we were chastising them that it wasn’t at all funny to be blind–that it was a very serious condition.  Imagine if you couldn’t see at all?  What would life be like?  The kids had much to say about the matter, naturally.  As if in harmony with our little fast food philosophizing, a Stevie Wonder song came on over the speaker system.  “Guess what?” we said.  “The guy singing this song is blind.  Stevie Wonder–he’s one of mommy and daddy’s favorites.  How do you think that affected him as an artist?”

Can I just say again how much I love digging into these sorts of conversations with my kids?

We didn’t exactly make the connection to this week’s $52 gift, but now I’d like to; after a bit of online research (including a search on Charity Navigator, of course), I’ve decided that this week’s gift should go to the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults.

From their website:

The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults is a service agency which specializes in providing to blind people help which is not readily available to them from government programs or other existing service systems. It operates through countless volunteers across the nation.

The purpose of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults is to assist blind and deaf-blind persons in securing reading matter, to educate the public about blindness, to provide specialized aids and appliances to the blind, to give consultation to governmental and private agencies serving the blind, to offer assistance to those losing vision in their later years, to offer services to blind children and their parents, and to work towards improving the quality of life for the blind and deaf-blind.

I hope you’ll take a moment today to give thanks for the gift of sight, if you possess it, and that you’ll consider giving something back in return to those who do not.

If you’re giving alongside us this week, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

It’s good to be back! Giver Girl and I are excited to start up another year of giving. I truly appreciate all the love and support of those who joined with us last year…without you, and without the grace of God, 2011 would not have been as successful as it was. In fact, support came in a number of different forms last year–and this week’s gift goes to support one of our trustiest resources to date.

One major issue for me last year was finding a new and worthwhile cause every other week. Often, Giver Girl and I would brainstorm ideas and sometimes inspiration would hit me like lightning. Other times, it was much more difficult to choose.

Early last year, we decided to look around on the web for help with identifying worthwhile causes. Almost immediately, we came upon Charity Navigator. CharityNavigator.org “works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace by evaluating the financial health, accountability and transparency of America’s largest charities.” Our prayers were answered! Tons of relevant information at our fingertips, giving us the ability to make intelligent decisions about our giving and to be exposed to organizations that we might not have heard of otherwise.

The work that Charity Navigator does is extremely worthwhile, but it takes financial support to keep it up and running. That is why this week’s 52 will be going their way. We encourage you to both support this worthwhile organization and make use of it as a resource when deciding where to direct your charitable dollars.

If you’re giving alongside us this week, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

“Charity begins at home.”  It’s a popular phrase, isn’t it?  I never gave it too much thought before (and, to be honest, sometimes looked at it as being an excuse to avoid giving), but this week changed all that.  I did a little web research before writing this, just to see where the idiom came from–not entirely sure, still, though I found out there is some biblical backup.  In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 5:8 says “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

The “especially” clause was interesting–I wouldn’t feel challenged in the slightest by the “own household” business (everybody who lives in the Giver house is provided for, and in fact has way more than they need), but as for the preceding “relatives,” well, it did get me thinking that maybe I’ve occasionally chosen to ignore the needs of family members in other places.

My brother, in particular, has been having a hard time of things lately.  Like many of our relatives (myself included), he struggles to maintain mental health.  Unfortunately, we have a strong genetic history of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and even suicide in our family.  Maintaining employment and an ideal independent living arrangement have always been difficult for him.  Recently, unable to keep up with his rent, he had to once again return to living with our mother.  I still have a lot of hope for his future, and he seems to as well–but so often, life seems so painfully hard for him.  We couldn’t have been any closer growing up; he’s only fifteen months my junior, and we were best friends and constant companions all throughout our childhood.  As we’ve found our own ways to battle the demons of our shared past, we’ve somehow both grown apart and remained steadfastly close in the years that have followed.  He still makes me laugh like no one else can, and he’s an amazing uncle and a dedicated father to his young son.  We’ll have our long talks from time to time, but often it’s hard for me to know how to help him.

And so we come to this week’s gift.  One of the changes we wanted to make to 52 times 52 in the new year was to involve our three children in the giving process.  They were largely ignorant of our project in 2011 (we only made occasional mention of it, and never spilled the full details), but we started to realize that as parents, we were learning lessons from our giving that weren’t so easily passed onto the kids in the absence of open, honest discussion about money.

Over the weekend, we sat them down and told them everything.  We tried to draw analogies to their own lives, to the prices of toys and games, the cost of food and other necessities, the fact that $52 could buy them the latest Wii game or feed a starving person in a developing country for a month.  My middle son immediately went to the shelves that hold their Wii games and told me which ones we should sell to feed the hungry.  Naturally, he picked the games they played least–we then talked about the difference between giving something that’s easy to give and giving something that’s hard to give (like the games they look forward to playing each Friday night).  We talked and we talked.  It was a beautiful conversation, and in many ways I’m sorry we didn’t have it sooner.

However, when the conversation turned to where we might give the first $52 of 2012, we put the decision in our kids’ laps.  They thought in silence for a moment, and then my oldest son said a single word: my brother’s name.  It was like his hand had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart–hard.

We spent some time thinking about the best way $52 could help him, and we ultimately decided that a gas card would be best.  He’s often unable to make long trips (including trips to visit us) because of want for gas money.  Other ideas popped up–new basketball shoes so he could better protect his injured knees while playing his favorite sport, rent money to help out our mother, or a new cell phone, as he’d recently lost one–but in the end the gift of traveling freedom seemed the most appropriate.  I held back tears as all three of the kids talked about the needs that they could see so clearly in his life; needs that, as I say, I have often chosen to ignore.

I can see already that we have a lot to learn from our children, and that involving them in 52 times 52 for 2012 is unquestionably the right decision.  I hope that you will join the Giver children this week in considering the needs of your relatives, and perhaps giving accordingly if a need makes itself clear to you.

And thank you, so much, to the new givers joining us in 2012 as well as the ones who’ve been with us since the beginning.  I hope you join me in excitedly looking forward to what this new year will hold in store for all of us.

If you’re giving alongside us this week, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Hardly feels like we’ve had any time to catch our breath and process the amazing first year of 52 times 52–but alas, time marches on.  Can it be the first Friday of 2012 already?!  Stay tuned for our first gift of 2012, and more details about our plans for the new year.

Sorry for the ALL CAPS, folks.  But we’re excited.  We really are.  As I sit here typing on New Year’s Eve (yes, we’re a day late with our post, what else is new), Giver Boy at my side and helping us collect our thoughts, we can’t quite believe that, by God’s grace, we’ve made it all the way from January to December, all the way through an entire year, giving all along the way.  Keeping our word and sticking to our New Year’s resolution.  It’s a first for us both.

So, as to why we’ve been so silent, skipping the past two Fridays’ posts: the holidays have been crazy for the Giver family!  Lots of planning and packing and wrapping and driving, driving, driving.  Not to mention we just got a dog, a lifestyle change to which we have taken some time to adjust.  All the while, though, we’ve been brainstorming and throwing out ideas for our last few gifts of the year.

Just over a week ago I read this article online about the Kmart “layaway angel” phenomenon (you’ve probably heard about it, but in case not–it seems to have started earlier this month in Michigan; the “angels” started coming into Kmart stores to pay off the layaway accounts of perfect strangers, just in time for Christmas).  I immediately ran into the living room to tell Giver Boy about it, my face flushed with certainty that we’d found the perfect way to end our year of giving.  He agreed.  It was then just a matter of locating the nearest Kmart store.

Would you believe there aren’t any within a half-hour’s drive of our house?  I was initially crestfallen, and even more so when I called one of the stores, 45 minutes away, and found out that no, you can’t make layaway payments over the phone.  Grrr.

Well, we had the idea, anyway.  We’d somehow make it happen when the time was right.

And we didn’t have to wait long–the time came during the first out-of-state stay of our holiday travels, when we remembered there’s a Kmart store just a half-mile from my mother’s house in Jersey.  Long story short (wandering around the store, waiting in a very long line, trying our best to look “anonymous”), with three weeks’ worth of $52, we were able to pay off not one but two layaway accounts, both filled with toys, clothes, pajamas, winter coats, even underwear.  My favorite part of the experience was when we finally approached the counter.  We’d wrung our hands worrying over the exact wording we’d use to explain what we wanted to do.  Turns out that was completely unnecessary.  The exchange went a little something like this:

Kmart associate: “Hi.”
Us: “Hello.”
Kmart associate: “You making a payment, or picking up?”
Giver Boy: (takes deep breath) “Um, neither.  So, we’re a part of this project…”
Kmart associate: (interrupting prepared speech) “Are you layaway angels?”
Us: “Yes.”
Kmart associate: “Hold on, let me see what we have.”

Turns out there’d been angels in line all morning.

Realizing this Kmart thing has nothing to do with us personally, I have to say that we felt exceptionally personalized warm-and-fuzzies at the thought that 2011 was seeming to end for the whole country in much the same manner that it started, hopefully and expectantly, for the two of us.  We never would have anticipated that, twelve months ago.  Then again, there’s a lot that’s happened during this journey that we never would have anticipated.

We can’t wait to see where 2012 will take us.

But as for 52times52, the 2011 edition–that, friends, is a wrap.

We haven’t forgotten our project, and we haven’t stopped giving, either.  We are, however, doing a lot of traveling and visiting during these holiday weeks.  Stay tuned for our last post of the season–a “triple” gift with plenty of Christmas spirit.

The awesome Philadelphia-based website Generocity.org recently interviewed me (Giver Girl) about the fact that we’ve stuck with our 2011 New Year’s resolution.  Hard to believe there are only three weeks left to the year, and that we’re as good as done with our 2011 pledge.  We feel honored to be included in a short list of folks profiled who ran the race and made it from January to December…check out this article and let us know your thoughts!